Because this needs to be on the Internet somewhere
Book: The Sword of Samurai Cat, by Mark E. Rogers
Story: The Dead Lot, Chapter 2
Working their way back to Castle Rock Road, they reached the Wise Old Black Lady's cross-festooned house after twenty minutes or so, going round to the back door. Before Tomokato could even knock, she ushered them swiftly in, a little wizened white-haired black woman with a shawl about her shoulders.
"About time you got here," laying a copy of Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions on a table near the door.
"How did you know we were coming?" Tomokato asked as she led them into the living room.
"I smelled it,"s he replied, motioning them to sit down on the couch.
"You can do that too?" Shiro asked.
"As long as I stay in this town," she answered. "It's the Bic Mac Burial Ground that does it."
"Big Mac Burial Ground?" Tomokato asked. "Does it have something to do with that McDonald's up on the hill?"
"No. The red man buried his dead here long before the white man arrived with his logic and technology and fast food. This was the land of the Big Mac Indians. The town was raised on the site of their tribal cemetery. But even before Bethelehem's Lot was built, the cemetery was abandoned by the Big Macs."
"Did they leave to attack someone?" Shiro asked.
"You mean a Big Mac attack?" the W.O.B.L. looked as though she had just bitten into a worm. "Hit that little bastard, Tomokato."
Tomokato swatted the kitten.
The W.O.B.L. continued: "Anyway, the cemetery was abandoned by the Big Macs----" Suddenly she pointed a sharp old finger at Shiro. "And I don't want to hear anything about it being taken over by Quarter Pounders!"
"But how..." Shiro gasped.
"I can smell jokes like that a mile off," she replied. "Tomokato?"
Tomokato swatted Shiro again.
"So as I said, the cemetery was abandoned by the Big Macs," the W.O.B.L. resumed, eyeing Shiro closely. His mouth stayed firmly shut. "They said the Wendigo had soured the earth---that the magic he put in the burial ground caused too much weird shit to happen."
Shiro's mouth began to open; Tomokato raised his hand, expecting yet another awful pun. But what came out was hardly better. "What kind of weird shit?" Shiro asked.
"Watch your language!" Tomokato told him.
"Yeah, Shiro," said the W.O.B.L. "I'm too old to change my habits, but you don't have that excuse."
"Maybe not that excuse," said Shiro, "but I'm young, and I don't know any better."
Tomokato hit him yet again.
"Anyway," the cat said, turning to the old woman, "what kind of weird sh...I mean, things?"
"Different people get weird different ways," the W.O.B.L. answered. "Some people levitate. "Some can light fires just by concentrating. A lot of folks become C.P.A.s. Town's full of 'em. A few people get the whole package---that's what I call the Smelling."
"Will I be able to light fires?" Shiro asked, delighted by the prospect.
"Probably, if you stay here long enough. You've got a smell on you like no one I've ever met. But you'll also probably turn into a C.P.A. I did." The old woman pointed to a framed diploma from Miskatonic University's accounting school.
"I don't mind," Shiro answered, "just so long as I get to burn things up."
"We won't be staying long if I can help it," Tomokato said.
"Just as well," said the W.O.B.L. "The firemen get enough work in this town as it is."
"Enough of this," Tomokato said. "How can I find Count Johnson?"
"His headquarters is in the basement under the McDonald's."
"Why did he come to such an out-of-the-way town?"
"I only know what I've smelled. But it goes back to the burial ground, again. It was in the summer of '57, I think---fellow named Savini buried his little girl's dead Saint Bernard Bubba in the one part of the cemetery that hasn't been built over, up on the north slope of the valley. That's the very sourest stretch---you get this lemony taste in your mouth when you just look at it.
"Anyway, this Savini fellow thought it would bring Bubba back to life---and he was right, too. But Bubba came back rabid. Killed Savini's whole family, except for the little girl. She set Bubba on fire with the smelling, and he ran out into the street and was hit by the Mayor's Studebaker wagon, Justine.
"We thought that was the end of it, but Bubba's spirit had gone into Justine...soon she was prowling around all on her own, running people down. We wanted to get rid of her, but the Mayor wouldn't let us, and after a while she became sort of a fixture around her, like the town fool, you know, and..."
"What does all this have to do with Count Johnson?" Tomokato asked.
"I"m getting there, just you wait," said the W.O.B.L. "Now one day in '68, Justine chased a rabbit into that McDonald's up on the hill. Killed a bunch of big shots from the McDonald's central office. From that day on, people started complaining about the hamburgers. Said they could see businessmen's faces staring at them from the cheese on the quarter-pounders. Place was haunted as Hell, so they closed it down.
"Was already too late, though. The McDonald's had become a psychic beacon. It was drawing all kinds of supernatural things to Bethelehem's Lot.
"Some of 'em weren't so bad, like this flock of Canada Geese with stigmata that blew in here one fall. They were very upright and Christian; put up a new wing to the hospital before they headed off to see the Pope when he was in Costa Rica. Worst trouble we had with 'em was when some little wise-ass told 'em that their stigmata were in the wrong places. They simply refused to believe that Jesus didn't have wings and webbed feet.
"But most of the things that came were evil. Accordion-players. The ghost of the guy that used to draw Nancy in the funny papers. Living-dead baby harp seals, clubbing folks to death for their pelts. And, last of all, the S.I.A."
"The S.I.A.?" Tomokato asked. "What's supernatural about them? Besides their leader, that is?"
"Everything."
"I thought they were just a government intelligence agency."
"That just a cover story. They're not connected with the government at all. They were created by a paranoid horror novelist who didn't know he could bring things into existence just by thinking of them. They were the worst thing he could think of."
"Not much of an imagination, huh?" Shiro asked.
The W.O.B.L. went on: "Count Johnson stumbled onto them awhile back and decided they were just the organization for him."
"But once again," Tomokato said, "what does he want with Bethelehem's Lot?"
"To test out Captain Fangs," she answered. "A virus that turns people into vampires. Starting a vampire cult takes too much time the regular way. You're real vulnerable until you've got your old-boy network built up. Captain Fangs is Johnson's shortcut. And so we woke up one morning to find the town surrounded by barbed wire, thinking Uncle Sam was just quarantining us to try out some new strains of anthrax."
"I thought it was nerve gas."
"That's what they told us to calm us down---after we found it it wasn't anthrax."
"What about Justine?" Shiro asked. "Does she work for Johnson, too?"
"All the evil things in town have joined him," she replied. "Even the harp seals. But they're off vacationing now."
"Where?"
"A Happyship Cruise."
"What about Ernie Bushmiller and the accordion-players?"
"Even Johnson couldn't stomach them. He talked them into possessing a videotape of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, then erased it."
"And the smelling revealed all of this to you?"
"Yes. But a lot of the stuff you smell isn't so important. In fact, most of it's pure psychic garbage, stuff no one would ever want to know, like what actually goes on in restaurant kitchens, or how long it's been since certain TV stars changed their underwear. God, there's this guy on one of the nighttime soaps who's such a pig, and you'd never know it..."
"It isn't John Forsyth, is it?" Shiro asked.